The Kansas-based church headed by the controversial pastor Fred Phelps, travels nationally to stage pickets, generally pushing an anti-gay agenda.

It seems they are branching out.

The Comic-Con fanboys were prepared though, staging their own counter-protest, according to Laura Hudson of ComicsAlliance, who is blogging from the annual comic book and sci-fi/fantasy über-expo.

Devotees of Westboro are used to resistance — being most famous for picketing soldiers’ funerals with their incendiary messages — but they probably don’t face a mob of Storm Troopers, robots and Federation officers all that often.

This is something of a deviation from their usual message but The Atlantic notes their motivation here, excerpted from a Westboro release:

If these people would spend even some of the energy that they spend on these comic books, reading the Bible, well no high hopes here….The destruction of this nation is imminent – so start calling on Batman and Superman now, see if they can pull you from the mess that you have created with all your silly idolatry.

The Comic-Con protest comes shortly after a slew of respected national media organizations signed onto an amicus brief supporting Westboro’s first amendment rights in an upcoming supreme court case.

The 18th century French philosopher Voltaire has been famously paraphrased to give perhaps the most well-known explanation of this principle: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Sometimes though, it takes a troupe of costumed comic book nerds to balance things out.